Uniting her with the Doomsday Virus was like an article of faith to him. As though it was going to save his and humanity's soul.
He didn't even seem to realise that about himself. For a man who had amassed such an incredible amount of knowledge on so many things, Greaves was totally lacking in self knowledge. You didn't find the sort of redemption he wanted in a test tube.
'Damn it,' Anna heard the man called Colt say. 'Where are Fitch and Golding?'
'Great Chief, Ahiga is not with us either.'
'Do not worry,' she heard the Chief say. 'Ahiga is a resourceful man. I am sure he knows exactly what he's doing.'
Ahiga had opened the shutters on the front office and led Fitch and Golding out into the empty corridors beyond. Golding's face was badly burned from the explosion and both men were now totally blind.
Ahiga stood behind them, steering them with a hand on each of their shoulders. He guided them into a dead end and up to a wall. 'That's far enough. Now I want both of you on your knees.'
'Hey, what is this?' said Fitch. 'I thought you were gonna get us out of here.'
Ahiga put a pistol against each of their temples. 'I said on your knees.'
Both men did as they were told.
'Do you remember a guy called Frankie McKenzie?' said Ahiga. 'Used to run with us back in Lomont. Good man to have in a fight but lacking in smarts. Which is why he always got pinched. Guy became a three time loser thanks to a man called Robert.'
'Robert! Is this about that faggot fucking parole officer?' said Fitch. 'What, you're finally gonna get sore with us?'
'I'm not getting sore. I'm getting even. Why else do you think I led you down here and got your eyes burned out?'
'C'mon Tom,' said Golding. 'I mean what did you expect us to do when we found you was carrying on with another man like that? You're lucky we let you live. You practically forced us to do it.'
'Way I recall it,' said Ahiga. 'You forced me.'
'You were getting above yourself,' said Fitch. 'What else was I going to do when I found out? You had to be brought back to earth.'
'Put on a leash you mean.'
'If you like, yeah.' said Fitch. 'Like Golding said, what do you expect? You get turned out in prison fine. You do what you gotta do to get by inside. You don't carry that sort of thing on when you get out though.'
'I didn't get turned out when I was inside. I didn't let a single man in there lay a finger on me.'
'So what, you suddenly develop a taste for it when you get out? That's sick.'
'I fell in love. I didn't want to. I fought it for a long time. It started after my parole finished. Robert was my officer. He dropped by to check up on me a few times and it went from there. I knew what it meant if we were found out. Robert would lose his job and I'd end up in some alley with a knife in my back.
'Except what happened when you found out was a lot worse. See, Frankie went away for the last time on a parole violation. So you got the 57th St bangers all good and stoked on crack and bourbon and told us you knew where the parole officer who sent Frankie away lived. Told us we should go down there and sort him out, as payback for what he did to Frankie. Wasn't till I got there that I realised where I was. Then it was too late, I wasn't going to say anything.
'So I went along. We broke in, we dragged Robert out of bed and we knocked him about. He recognised me straight away. He knew that if he gave anything away it would be the death of me. So he kept his mouth shut and took everything you gave him. Then you put the gun in my hand. Told me to put it in his mouth and kill the only person I ever loved. I did it too. Because I was a coward.
'Not an hour goes by when I don't regret it. Right up until the very end Robert kept his mouth shut. To save my life, even when I took his. I killed Robert to prove my manhood and my bravery to the rest of you. But in dying the way he did, Robert proved he was far braver and far more of a man.'
'Enough with the speeches already,' said Fitch. 'If you're gonna kill us just get on with it. Don't expect us to beg.'
'I'm not going to kill you. Not unless you force me to. Now lie down. You this way, and Golding like that.'
Ahiga arranged them so that both men were lying on their sides facing each other with their feet in opposite directions. Fitch's face was right up against Golding's crotch and Golding's was in Fitch's. Ahiga pressed a pistol to each of their temples. 'Now I want you to get each other's weapons out and you can guess where I want you to put them. Just think of that pistol and how Robert took it.'
'Go fuck yourself,' said Fitch. 'Not even a bullet in the head will make me do that.'
'I'm not gonna put a bullet in your head. I'm gonna fire one up your ass if you don't do what I tell you. Now this is a small calibre pistol. That bullet's gonna bounce around quite a lot before it stops. Do a lot of damage. Even still it's gonna take a long time before you die. Hours and hours of unending agony. Blind and trapped all the way down here, with the rats gnawing on your face as you shit out your own innards. I reckon there's nothing you won't do to avoid that. You ain't brave enough.
'So now, in order to survive, you're both gonna do something that you'll have to live with for the rest of your lives. Something you'll never escape and never live down. Something I'll always have hanging over your heads. Just like you did with me. Now quit stalling and open wide.'
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
'Tell me child,' Hiamovi said to Anna. 'What tribe are you from?'
Anna had been quite shocked to see Native Americans and Neo-Clergy fighting together to help Greaves and Cortez rescue her. She was still getting used to the idea.
'I'm very sorry, erm… Great Chief,' Anna said. 'But I don't know. I have no memory of it but I was conceived and grown in a test tube, in a hellish place like this. I've hardly ever met any of your… our people. I was raised in a Christian community. I suppose you could say my tribe are, were, the Amish.'
'Hear that Hiamovi?' said Mr Colt. 'Girl's a Christian. Don't hold with your pagan superstitions.'
Hiamovi glowered back at him but didn't answer.
He was a strange man this Native American chief. The hard emotional front men of power hide behind did not sit comfortably with him. He seemed to Anna like a good man who was learning to be bad. The duplicity and ruthlessness of wielding power did not come naturally to him.
Colt on the other hand appeared to be a man whose conscience had just caught up with him. Like the gold cross he wore around his neck it had grown heavier with every vicious thing he had done in its name. Anna noted that they were both wrestling with the same dilemma, but in opposite ways.
Anna also felt as though, in their own perverse manner, they were courting her. Like she was the only child of a wealthy land owner. Both men wanted to wed her to their cause. Both craved the power they thought she could give them. Once again it came down to men and their insatiable appetites.
The doors of the lab were wide open when they arrived.
'Oh,' said Greaves in surprise. 'How convenient, a flaw in their security even I didn't foresee.' He stood in the doorway to block everyone's path. 'There's a lot of deadly and infectious material in there that's about to get loose. Wait here a moment.'
Greaves appeared a moment later with his arms full of bio-hazard suits. 'You're going to need these.' He handed a suit to everyone but Anna declined hers.
'I won't be needing that,' she said.
'No, of course not,' Greaves replied.
The doors to every room in the lab were wide open as they walked through. Only the hexagonal booth with the titanium containers remained shut. Anna felt a hole open up inside her, one that longed to be filled by the virus. She wanted to cradle it with her body and let it grow inside her.
Anna, who had been leading the small war party through the lab, turned to stop them now. 'I can take it from here.'
